


Corporate Intrigue

by RegalMisfortune



Series: The Tales of Others [3]
Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: ???How to write Morris???, F/M, Female Player Not a Farmer, First Meetings, For the good masses of a discord server, Lewis is a bit of a crotchety old man in this, OC Not Mine, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 19:09:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15225936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RegalMisfortune/pseuds/RegalMisfortune
Summary: Anderson Miller is hired as Project Head for the clearing of the Pelican Town landslide for Joja Corp.There she meets the new District Manager.





	Corporate Intrigue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HoolOfTheNorth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoolOfTheNorth/gifts).



> For the good (and corrupting) souls of the SDV RP Discord Server. 
> 
> Feel free to bother me on [tumblr!](http://regalmisfortune.tumblr.com/)  
> 

Pelican Town was a quiet, peaceful little place, tucked in a hamlet between the rising mountains and the rolling sea. It was picturesque countryside living, down to the chickens on the ranch not too far out of town.

Anderson hated it.

She loved the hustle and bustle of city life, the social connections used to get a step up above the rest. But a job was a job, and if the Mining and Natural Resource Development Department of the Joja Corporation reassigned her from prospecting out old mines in a ghost town in the Calico Desert to dig out a landslide in this green patch of nothing, then so be it.

Besides, Anderson had to admit to herself, there were some surprising benefits.

For one, she was head of the project now. She wasn’t sure nor cared what Joja had been doing to cause such a massive slide, but it had killed the old District Manager of the JojaMart and all outreach projects in the area, and the rest of the workforce outside the store itself spontaneously and collectively quit. Joja had to scramble to both fill in the empty voids and sweep the entire mishap under the rug, and since she was the most experienced who happened to be relatively nearby, they had all but begged her to go.

Anderson was more than happy to jump on the opportunity. The ghost town of Klipping was rather boring after the wild animals were chased off and no actual ghosts made an appearance. Granted there was the occasional rattlesnake, but Anderson preferred something a bit more exciting in between the hard work of mining for new ore veins.

Now she was the boss of a colossal disaster, and so far, the only person working on it.

The other benefit had been Marlon. He was a grizzled older man who showed up on the first day she started working out which areas of the landslide were weak and more prone for further collapse, an actual to god sword on his hip. Anderson had heard rumors of Adventure Guilds spotted about elsewhere in the wilds of Ferngill, but she had chalked it all up as some overenthusiastic LARP group. But after talking to the man, she became maybe a bit too enthusiastic about the prospect of hunting monsters down in some old mines not too far away from the landslide. Even if there weren’t any monsters, the adventure of exploring old mineshafts had its appeal. Perhaps she could do that on her day off… hm…

The downside of it all was that she had to deal with the mayor of Pelican Town: Lewis.

Good old _fucking Lewis_. That man didn’t know well enough to leave her be. He had come up every single day since she arrived, complaining about the landslide, complaining about the noise she was making, complaining about how the river was getting dirty with sediment because of said landslide, upset that the mess hadn’t been taken care of yet and it was disrupting the flow and natural beauty of the area.

It took all of Anderson’s willpower _not_ to stab his head with her pick and apologize later thinking it had been a rock and that she was _so sorry-_ but no, she liked her job and would rather keep it, thank you very much.

It had been three days since she arrived, and to be quite honest, Anderson was getting pissed. Joja had yet to send any more workers, Lewis had been up to visit her at four in the goddamn morning when she wanted to work before the sun dried her out like a piece of jerky, and now there was someone clearing their throat rather impatiently behind her.

“ _WHAT_?!” The question came out of her with vicious force, teeth grinding together as she sunk her pick into the sun-baked earth and turned a dangerous glare over to the intruder. Couldn’t they see she was fucking _working_ and that they were trespassing on a Joja project?!

All anger sapped away in an instant when her eyes fell on a rather large man in an impeccable suit. He was behind the caution fences as safety regulations permitted, and an eyebrow was quirked upward in a slight unamused expression above his round glasses that were perched near the end of his rather large nose. He radiated importance, and Anderson couldn’t help but feel both relieved and horrified with herself at the same time.

“Oh. I thought you were the Mayor,” she said in the only sort of apology she could think of at the moment, Lewis’ title rolling off her tongue with a slight sarcastic sneer.

It seemed to be enough, as the eyebrow dropped back to a relaxed state, as his eyes ( _were his eyes red??_ ) became more understanding.

“Ah,” was all he noted for the briefest moment, his hand smoothing over his suit in an unconscious manner before continuing. “I completely understand. The good mayor is certainly… an individual.”

Anderson snorted, leaning against the handle of her pick as she lifted her safety goggles off her face. It seemed the pair of them shared a common dislike for the mayor.

“I won’t keep you long from your work,” the man continued. “I am the new District Manager. I will be overseeing the cleanup. You must be Ms. Miller.”

“Anderson is fine,” she butted in. “I’d come down and shake your hand, but-“ She waggled her fingers in his direction, the fingerless gloves crunching slightly with caked earth. “And you already know I’m the Project Head for _this_ disaster.” She added emphasis by sweeping her hand over the landslide of rock and dirt, although she never took her eyes away from the man.

“Morris, then,” he amended with what could’ve been a ghosting smile in the corners of his lips, but it was gone when Anderson blinked, a more serious frown on his face. “Where are all your other workers? It is already-“ He checked his watch. “-Ten in the morning.”

“They don’t exist.” It was Anderson’s turn to lift an eyebrow. Didn’t Morris know that it was just herself so far? “It’s just me.”

“’It’s just’-“ Morris was staring at her before his head tipped toward, his glasses falling further down his nose as he pinched the bridge of his nose. She could hear the stress in his sharp inhale, and she couldn’t help but feel bad for the man. He had, after all, been dumped in the middle of two crises- the landslide and the obvious clusterfuck that was the local JojaMart. Being this far in the middle of nowhere would leave a small and lackadaisical workforce, and with Lewis breathing down the neck of anyone having anything larger than a market stall at a farmers’ market, the JojaMart was a bit of a mess. She knew- she’d been in there the first night she had arrived to buy _something_ resembling food and found one stockboy already three cans into a box of Joja branded beer and another rolling through the aisles on heelies, headphones jammed over his ears.

“I will contact Corporate,” Morris stated with authority after a moment, dropping his hand from his face to gaze over his round spectacles at Anderson. “You will have a crew with you before the end of the week.”

Anderson wanted to run off the dirt mound and kiss Morris’ face. Instead she gave the man a brilliant, sharp-toothed smile.

“You’re the best! Thanks!”

Morris let out a small cough, smoothing his suit out once more before turning away. “I expect this mess to be cleaned up by the end of next week.”

“Sure thing, boss!” Anderson offered him a lazy salute. “And if you need someone to knock some sense into your workers, let me know! I have an extra shovel they can have to learn that their job’s a breeze.”

The slight, amused smile she was given in return made Anderson float throughout the rest of the day. Not even Lewis could bring her back to earth.


End file.
